


An Echo of What Was Left [Twitter Thread Version]

by JayAnarchy



Series: Twitter Threads [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Galra Mating, M/M, Mating, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Spoilers, Suicide, Unhappy Ending, twitter thread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 14:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19200388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayAnarchy/pseuds/JayAnarchy
Summary: Shiro is married and it's not to Keith. While marriage is something that can be taken back, a galra mating for life cannot.





	An Echo of What Was Left [Twitter Thread Version]

**Author's Note:**

> As the title says, this is the twitter thread fic I did of An Echo of What Was Left. Some things in the Ao3 version may differ from the twitter version but for those who are impatient and don't want to wait around for me to finish the Ao3 version, this is for you. I'm leaving it up on twitter as well but I really kind of wanted to have it here as well cause I'm weird like that. So here it is. 
> 
> Oh, the way this is gonna look is probably gonna suck cause it's just getting copied over from twitter. So, many lines and non-existant paragraphs.

The war is over, everyone can finally relax.  
Shiro decides, for whatever reason, he wants to marry some stranger named Custard. I mean, Curtis.  
Of course, he asks Keith to be his best man.  
And of course, Keith stupidly says yes.  
Keith somehow gets through the ceremony and chokes back the worst of the sobs during the best man speech.  
He's crying but Shiro's drifted too far away to realize that they aren't happy tears.  
Everyone else notices and has no idea what the hell is happening.  
Well, besides Krolia, Kolivan and Pidge.  
The galra know because they understand how galra mating works, plus, they can smell Keith's heartbreak on him.  
Pidge is just smart and has know Shiro for years cause of Matt. And through Shiro she knows a bit about Keith.  
She's also the only one who knows that the idiots are in love with each other. Not like it matters since they're both convinced the other doesn't feel the same. So, now Shiro's married and Keith is heartbroken.  
Krolia is pissed and convinces Keith to join the Blades  
Keith doesn't come back to Earth, but he does keep in contact with the paladins. It's only because they won't leave him alone, of course.  
Keith doesn't call Shiro and he tries to keep the call short when Shiro does call.  
Those calls become less and less over the years.  
The only time he ever sees the paladins in person is when they gather on the anniversary under Allura's statue.  
Keith never stays long. There's only so much of seeing Shiro happily married he can handle and only so many pity looks from his friends before he feels sick.  
He had made the others swear to never bring up Keith's feelings, or Keith in general to Shiro unless he asks. The only way he got them to agree was to threaten never speaking to them again. The paladins are worried enough that they make sure to stay quiet.  
If Shiro wants to forget about him, Keith would let himself be forgotten. It didn't matter anyway, it was only a matter of time before he no longer existed. While he had human blood there was still Galra blood that ran through his veins.  
And much to his mother's disappointment and fear, that human blood wasn't going to keep him alive.  
It might give him a few more years to live but it didn't change the facts.  
His mate rejected him and he was going to die.  
Slowly and painfully.  
Krolia didn't know yet. She still had hope. Keith didn't have the heart to tell her. He already couldn't handle the looks she gave him for losing Shiro, he couldn't imagine trying to see her when she knew that he was going to die.  
It was rare. For someone to take a life mate.  
It was something Galra did with much consideration and only when they knew the person they wanted to bond with shared the mutual want. Keith, not knowing anything of being Galran, gave that bond to Shiro.  
Mutual bonding was rare.  
One-sided was unheard of.  
It was dangerous.  
It was suicide if the other bonded and then was rejected by the one they bonded with.  
Shiro had rejected Keith.  
Krolia had the hope that his human genes would allow the bond to fade away without taking her son with it.  
With their promise to Keith, Krolia's protective motherly hate towards the captain, and Keith's own silence... Shiro lived a blissfully oblivious life with his new husband.  
Three years pass.  
Shiro has retired and is living on Earth with Curtis and a dog.  
Keith can still pretend he's okay. He's lost weight and looks tired, but he can still act like he's fine. He's just been super busy. He had a hard mission. He had been captured for a few weeks.  
There were endless amounts of excuses.  
The other paladins didn't believe a word he said. They could see Keith falling apart even though they knew nothing about the galra life bonds. He refused to tell them.  
The excuses were fine for Shiro.  
He just gave a worried look and told him to make sure to rest up.  
Shiro skips the fourth year. He doesn't tell anyone exactly why. He tells them that if all goes well, they will get to see why come the fifth year.  
Year five.  
Shiro shows up with Curtis and two children under the age of five.  
Keith has to excuse himself to get sick.  
Lance finds him and sits with himself as he heaves until he's sure the only thing left to come up is his stomach and itself.  
Lance never sees the blood in the mess of sick.  
But he hears the broken sobs.  
He sees the tears when Keith gets up and tells him he's leaving.  
Lance doesn't stop him. He just goes back and sits down.  
He doesn't need to say anything to the other two paladins, they know that this was too much for Keith to take.  
Shiro doesn't. So when he notices that Keith's gone, he asks.  
He opened the door for Lance to speak.  
He opened the door for all of them to speak.  
Curtis is with the kids when the three of them beg him to talk to Keith.  
They're leaving when Pidge corners him and tells him that she knows.  
Tells him that he NEEDS to tell Keith. That he needs to stop pretending he's happy.  
He leaves pissed at Pidge, but the groups words of desperate worry over Keith echos in his head.  
It's the middle of the night when Shiro calls Keith.  
Keith doesn't answer.  
Shiro assumes he's sick and sleeping.  
He calls him a week later.  
Keith never answers.  
Shiro calls two more times before he calls an unhappy looking Krolia.  
She reluctantly gets Keith to come take his call.  
Keith looks horrible.  
He tells Shiro it's like a Galran flu. He was fine, not to worry about him.  
It's the first time Shiro actually reads Keith since after the fight with the clone.  
But the only thing he can read is that Keith has shut him out.  
He's shut him out completely.  
Shiro doesn't know what he did wrong, but he doesn't have much time to thing about it.  
One of the kids cries from the nursery. Keith is quickly forgotten about between his two children and trying to make his marriage work.  
He tries not to think about how right Pidge was.  
He wasn't happy.  
But it was too late. Keith had locked him out and Shiro was married.  
Keith can tell things are going to start getting worse and fast.  
He's running out of time and he doesn't want his mom to see it.  
Plus, he still has one thing left to do. Something he had been doing on the side without his mother knowing. Without Kolivan knowing. Or anyone.  
He calls a meeting with his mother and Kolivan and tells them he's leaving. Kosmo will be left behind, that it wouldn't be comfortable for him to go on this mission with him. He tells them that he isn't sure when he'll get back. He tells them it's something he has to do alone.  
He doesn't tell them that he doesn't plan on coming back.  
He hugs them extra tight.  
He tells Kosmo how good of a boy he was. He tells the space wolf to stay and help the other blades.  
He packs and leaves like it was any other mission.  
He doesn't mention the videos.  
He takes his personal ship.  
He had made sure to modify it a bit before he left.  
They didn't know that this ship would be what held his final goodbye.  
So they watched him leave and wished him a safe return.  
They got didn't hear from Keith for six months.  
When their datapads ding with a message. Krolia and Kolivan, Pidge, Hunk and Lance all open it to see Keith's face. He's sitting in his BOM room. This was taken before he left for his mission. The one he's still on. The one he's disappeared on.  
Attached to the message is a set of coordinates.  
As they listen to the message, sobs muffled by hands so they could hear Keith's final words, they realize it leads them to where they will find his body.  
He had gone off to find a handful of Haggar's clones that lived.  
He didn't explain how he knew about them or what they were doing. He just said that it was the last thing he needed to do. He wasn't going to just lay down and die. He had wanted to go out fighting.  
What was a better way to die... than to die with the man he loved.  
Or at least someone or someones with Shiro's face and memories. Evil or not.  
He had gone knowing it would kill him, so he had made this message for them.  
He told them not to tell Shiro.  
He told them, to never speak of him unless Shiro asked.  
He asked them to keep that promise.  
Krolia is the one to convince them to follow Keith's wishes. She confirms Keith's explanation of life bonding. All Keith wanted, besides to be with him, was for Shiro to be happy. His last wish was for him to keep him that way.  
Not to let his death hurt the other unless asked.  
The paladins don't agree, but they're more worried about finding Keith's body than telling Shiro at this point. Though Pidge called, she only called once, hoping Shiro would answer.  
He didn't.  
So the three paladins left and went to meet up with Krolia.  
Things would have been much more urgent if it weren't for what Keith had said in the video.  
The videos would only be sent out after his suit no longer detected a life force. It triggered the videos and the tracking location on his ship only after that point.  
There was no hope that they would find Keith alive.  
So they took the time to meet and go together.  
It was a mess of blood and bodies.  
Among the bodies of Shiro's clones was Keith.  
He was slouched against the wall, the side of his suit coated in blood.  
Blood crusted on his lips.  
In his lap, laying out over the floor was a clone.  
Keith's hand was curled in the brown locks.  
He must have been comforting this clone when it died... or comforting himself as he bled out.  
They cried. They all cried as they gathered the bodies. They let the blades that came with them take care of the bodies of the clones but Krolia and the paladins took care of Keith.  
They helped her put Keith in a cryopod where he would stay until they arrived on earth.  
While they all agreed that Earth was not Keith's home. They also agreed that burying Keith next to his father appropriate.  
The blades held a ceremony afterward which included a lot of drinking, fighting, and stories being told.  
It felt wrong without Shiro.  
But they had promised.  
No one knew that Keith was gone.  
Only the Blades and the three paladins.  
Coran too, of course.  
Shiro was blissfully kept in the dark.  
And he stayed that way for two years before he finally came to the reunion.  
He hadn't been able to the year after Keith's death. The kids and Curtis had been sick and he had stayed home to take care of them. The other's didn't complain. They didn't know how they were going to even tell Shiro yet.  
He would be mad that no one told him sooner.  
But how could they go against Keith's last wish when he BEGGED them not to tell Shiro unless he asked. He desperately wanted to keep Shiro happy in his own little world. He had no idea that Shiro's marriage, try hard as he might, was slowly failing.  
While Shiro was a great father, he was an absent husband. While he was there physically, he found his mind far off most of the time. Thinking about the stars and how he wished he was still working. His nightmares woke Curtis constantly and he could never find it in himself -  
To tell Curtis what they were about. He couldn't tell the man about anything outside what he had seen when they fought together in Atlas. They somehow struggled to this point. Seven years. They thought children would help them grow closer, but what happened was the opposite.  
So, when he came to his first reunion after Keith's death, he was already looking for something else to focus on rather than his failing marriage. It didn't take long to notice how everyone's mood shifted when he arrived.  
Something was wrong but he didn't know what.  
It took him a few moments to notice that Keith wasn't around.  
Keith wasn't around and SHIRO was late.  
Shiro was like an hour and a half late.  
So he asked. He asked the question that everyone was hoping but dreading that Shiro would ask.  
He didn't expect their reactions.  
Hunk was in tears.  
Pidge looked royally pissed.  
Lance... well, Lance was a mess.  
He ended up being the one to break the news.  
He yelled at Shiro. He yelled at Shiro, giving him the answer while cursing Keith's name for what he did.  
They were close towards the end.  
Lance stalked off, unable to handle the emotions of reunion day and what happened with Keith.  
Hunk followed.  
Coran followed.  
Pidge sat there and waited.  
Shiro didn't believe it.  
He hadn't heard that right.  
He couldn't have. There was no way that Keith was dead.  
It was impossible. Keith didn't die. He sure as hell hadn't died almost two years ago without Shiro knowing. He would have known. He would have called and... but he didn't call. He didn't ask any of the others about him either because he barely called them.  
He wanted to yell at them. To make them tell the truth, but he knew by the look on Pidge's face and how the others reacted. It was true.  
He looked at Pidge helplessly with tears in his eyes.  
She had told him. She had told him years ago. He hadn't listened.  
He asked what happened in such a broken voice, but Pidge didn't say a word. She didn't say anything for a long while. When she did, she only spoke of Keith was dying from an illness and he had decided to go out guns blazing. She explained why no one told him.  
It had a sob ripping from Shiro's throat. He hadn't known because he never asked. He never asked about Keith and when he had talked to Keith he never... He never asked and he never tried to get the other to open up to him again.  
He had left him when he needed him the most.  
She told him where he was buried and then she left.  
That night, when Shiro finally got himself to leave to head back to earth, the news of the black paladin's death was all over the news. They had been waiting for him to ask before telling the world.  
He spent the night at Keith's grave. He stayed through the morning and it was noon before he was making his way home. Curtis was there waiting. He knew. He had no idea that Keith had been gone for two years though. The news never mentioned that part.  
They spoke as if it had just happened, but Shiro knew better now.  
It was a week later when Shiro woke in the middle of the night. For once it wasn't a nightmare that shook him from his slumber. No, it was a presence in the back of his mind. One he hadn't felt since the war.  
Black. Black was calling to him. Shiro couldn't barely bite back the sob that wanted to fall from his lips. He couldn't help but hope that Black saved Keith as she had saved him. He needed to see Keith. He needed to know why... he needed to say sorry.  
He was shoving things in his bag when Curtis woke up. Shiro never thought he would hear Adam again, but that night, as he packed his bags, he heard Adam's voice again. Once again, he chose the stars over the one his life on Earth.  
It was one of the hardest things saying goodbye to his children, but Shiro would be back someday. He knew that. He wouldn't leave them. He wouldn't let them end up in a home again. Not with Keith so fresh on his mind. But he had to go, he had to answer Black's call.  
Years.  
It takes Shiro years to find her.  
She's hidden on the edge of the universe.  
Hidden away for only him to find.  
He knew that after he had done what she wanted she would be gone again, but he was more worried about Keith than losing her again.  
Keith.  
He just wanted Keith.  
She opened her mouth with ease, letting Shiro run up the ramp and into the cockpit, calling out Keith's name. Keith hadn't heard him in the astral plane, but he had been able to hear Keith. He wanted to let him know he was there. He had to let him know he didn't leave him.  
Sitting in the pilot seat, Shiro focused. He focused on getting himself to the astral plane even though the thought of going back terrified him. When he got there, he was met by a voice. It was Keith's. Keith's voice, but he didn't see Keith anywhere.  
With a low rumble from the lion, the world shifted. The plane changed to project images for Shiro to see. Images and memories from black. Every single memory she had of Keith confessing his love for Shiro. Some in words and some in actions and feelings.  
She showed him everything and it broke him. Every second he watched he could only break apart more, sob harder, feel even more lost. Keith had loved him with everything he had. And he died for it. He had found out after he started hunting for black.  
He had finally gotten ahold of Krolia and she told him exactly what had happened. Had told him from the moment that Shiro had told Keith he was getting married, until the very moment she had to put him in the ground. The wedding, the sickness, the clones, the life bonding.  
Everything.  
So, when the last memory that flashed in front of him was of a Keith he couldn't recognize, Shiro knew that before he died... Black had gone to see him off. She had found him as he died, holding a clone in his lap as it gasped in it's last breaths.  
eith had told her he didn't want to be saved. There was no need. Shiro had saved him years ago and it was time for him to go. There was no need for him anymore. Shiro was happy and married with beautiful kids. He forgot about him. It was okay if he just disappeared now.  
He was crying. He was crying and he would cough and his lips would be tinted red with his blood. He sobbed then. He sobbed with the only one who was there in his final minutes. And he confessed. He confessed to everything. To every second he loved Shiro from the beginning to end.  
Shiro couldn't breathe. He couldn't stop choking on his sobs, wanting to reach out and grab Keith, to pull him close and tell him it was okay. To tell him...  
To tell him that...  
That he loved him too.  
He loved Keith, he always had.  
Keith didn't deserve him though.  
And in the end, Shiro's stupid choice had ended with Keith getting himself killed. Ended with him going out on a suicide mission to die with the closest thing he could get to him. The closest he could get to dying with Shiro by his side. He died with Shiro's name on his lips.  
He had died, loving Shiro and wondering why Shiro hadn't loved him back when the whole time Shiro had.  
God, what had he done?  
What. Had. He. Done?


End file.
